The Burning Man

the jeep and she could just drive hard and fast out of there.

She skidded out of the grove and sprinted towards the lights of the farmstead. Passing the well-tended herb garden, she had a clear view of the grounds. No surprises. She glanced back to find the Libertarian right behind her. His fist smashed into the back of her head and she hit the ground hard.

Dust filled her mouth. Blood splattered from her temple and her head rang. She kicked out at the Libertarian, but he caught her ankle and flipped her over, sitting astride her and pinning her arms back.

Ruth glared at him.

‘No cliches? No “do your worst”? Or are you hoping I won’t realise you’re working on one of your conjure- thoughts?’ The Libertarian punched Ruth in the face. Blood ran into her mouth. ‘Pain makes it very difficult to concentrate, doesn’t it? Best not to try.’

Ruth looked into his eyes and saw that she was going to die. A surprising calmness and clarity suffused her. There was no hatred or anger, no regret, just an acceptance that felt like a burden being lifted from her shoulders. She thought of Church and wished him well, of Shavi and Laura; even, surprisingly, of Veitch.

Surprised by her reaction, puzzlement crossed the Libertarian’s face, but only fleetingly. ‘Knowing you as I do, I should have guessed you wouldn’t give me any pleasure at the end,’ he muttered. He shrugged. ‘For so long it was impossible to harm you or your dragon-brethren, but here at the source we are equals.’

He moved his hands to Ruth’s throat and began to squeeze. ‘You can fight,’ he continued with irritation. ‘You can cry. You can scream.’

Ruth smiled. ‘We’ll win. You know that.’

The Libertarian’s face darkened. The grip on her throat tightened. Her breath faded and the pressure on her chest became unbearable. Stars flashed, trails of Blue Fire exploded, and then she was flooded by a dreamy warmth that signalled the end.

4

On the side of a deserted road on the Albanian-Greek border, Church was stung by a lone tear and a devastating sense of loss that he couldn’t begin to explain. Tom leaned against a tree next to him, smoking and watching the flames dance in the campfire. Hunter slept — he had an ability to doze off anywhere — and Shavi meditated on the edge of the gloom. Laura had wandered away into the trees, complaining of boredom.

‘If I decided to walk away tonight, what would you do?’ Church asked.

‘I’m not your keeper.’

‘You act like it.’

‘And you act like a hopeless, besotted, soft-headed fool, as you have from the moment I first met you.’

‘I can’t carry on doing this without Ruth. I spent so long looking for some kind of meaning in my life and she’s it. I always thought that was a stupid, romantic idea — that in the end it all came down to one person. But it’s true.’

There was a long silence during which Tom exhaled blue smoke, his eyes closed. Eventually he said, ‘The Fool finds wisdom on the road of life, and in your thick way you seem to have stumbled across it. Everything comes down to love. When we’re young, it’s all we want. When we’re comfortably married and the routine has set in, we yearn for its exhilarating rush. When we’re not getting it, we seek out money, sex or power to try to fill the gap.’ He eyed Church askance. ‘Love drives everyone insane. It makes the best of us do wonderful things and terrible things. Yes, you’re right — it’s the root of everything. It’s the magic and the curse of Existence.’

‘You seem to have survived pretty well without it.’

‘That shows how much you know.’ His spectacles caught the light of the campfire so his eyes could not be seen. ‘I left my love behind near eight hundred years ago. There won’t be another. Now don’t go asking me any more stupid questions about that.’

Church looked towards the south. Would it really be so bad if he left the world to the Void? People would continue to live their lives, find love, have children, the sop that made the rest of it bearable. He could reach Ruth faster on his own. They had been forced to take detour after detour to avoid the net of the security services, hiding out for days in damp, stinking warehouses, going nights without sleep, constantly changing vehicles.

As he weighed his decision, Shavi staggered up to the campfire, ashen-faced. ‘I fear …’ he began, choking back the words. ‘I fear something has happened to Ruth.’

5

Ruth’s hair was stirred occasionally by the light night breeze so that it gave the illusion of life. Beside her, the Libertarian sat in the dust, studying her face, pondering on what he saw there. He scooped up a handful of the dry earth and slowly let it dribble out of the bottom of his fist.

‘There is nothing left for me here,’ he said eventually. ‘Without you, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons cannot achieve anything meaningful. Indeed, this is the beginning of their end.’ Throwing the remainder of the earth away with an incipient anger that puzzled him, he added, ‘Back to the Otherworld it is, then. There are cities to raze, and genocide to complete. My days will be pleasingly full. No more of this sickening rat-hole. Good riddance to it.’

He made to get up, and then paused to study Ruth’s face again. After a few seconds, he kissed her quickly on the lips, and then marched away without once looking back.

6

From the rumbling, soil-and-pebble-raining entrance to the Underworld spewed Veitch, filled with all the fury of a devil let loose from hell. His sword blazed with the blackest flames, and he was covered with the grey gore of two hundred brutal deaths. Miller was dragged along in his wake, struck dumb by terror and the horrors he had witnessed. Flanking them were the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders, weapons and hoofs still dripping.

‘Get me to her,’ Veitch barked.

There was only a momentary pause before Etain swept him up onto her horse, and then they were off on a wild ride across the Greek countryside, beneath implacable stars and a cold moon, along still-hot roads, through trees that tore at their hair and skin, across dusty, rock-strewn slopes, until they finally arrived at the still puddle of light that was the compound.

Veitch instantly recognised the motionless form, carefully laid out in a cruciform, and threw himself from the horse before it had come to a halt. Sprinting to Ruth’s side, he kneeled and checked her vitals. She looked as if she was sleeping.

The reality of her death took a moment to break through the barrier of his hopes. As he ran his fingers through her curls, and stroked the pale curve of her cheek, he recalled the first time he had seen her, when they were still naive about their own potential and the future course of their lives, and he remembered how stupid he had felt, like some animal rising up out of the mud to look at a higher form of life. Ruth was always better; not just cleverer or wiser, or more experienced than a South London thug like him, but she was more moral, with a profound emotional awareness and a heart as big as the world. Sometimes he had been shocked that the others hadn’t seen it. It was his secret, their bond.

Over the intense, dangerous, uplifting months they had spent together during that Age of Misrule when the gods first made their move, he had come to realise there was an emptiness at the heart of his life that only she could fill. For her, he could strive for better things. Without her he was back at the gates of hell.

Too grandiose? That was a Church word, but Church understood those things as much as he understood Ruth. No, not too grandiose. A pure and simple truth.

Veitch took her hand and made his fifth futile fumble for a pulse. And then he cried for the first time in two